


Some Things You Just Can’t Shake

by LilyAceOfDiamonds



Series: We All Need Friends [3]
Category: Titans (TV 2018)
Genre: Drug Withdrawal, Past Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-19 00:21:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22635703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilyAceOfDiamonds/pseuds/LilyAceOfDiamonds
Summary: Jason wakes up and finds Roy suffering alone, so he helps him. He’s not a complete asshole, after all.
Series: We All Need Friends [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1624585
Comments: 2
Kudos: 100





	Some Things You Just Can’t Shake

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t know anything about withdrawal past whatever the internet and tv tells me, but I tried. Roy is still clean, no worries, I just find it hard to believe that after a week or whatever of rehab there would never be random days of cravings or withdrawal symptoms.
> 
> Also, Jason Todd is a confirmed thespian and I am one hundred percent sure that the theatre kids at that high school spent half their rehearsal time listening to All The Musicals and singing them at the top of their lungs. That’s just how that works.
> 
> The song Jason sings is ‘You Will Be Found’ from the musical Dear Evan Hansen. It’s delightfully angsty, deals with some heavy topics in a great way, and has amazing music. Highly recommend.

Jason has been at Roy’s for almost a week. He hasn’t slept through the night once, waking from nightmares several times before giving up and browsing Roy’s bookshelf for something to read until the sun rises.

This time, though. He wakes up to a noise, to someone talking.

He registers the voice as Roy’s, coming from the bathroom, but Jason doesn’t know who he’s talking to. It’s still dark, not quite three in the morning, but he gets up from the futon and quietly moves towards the bathroom. His curiosity is peaked, and he can always claim to be grabbing water from the kitchen as he passes the open bathroom door.

Jason glances into the room, expecting to see Roy on the phone or something and continue on his way past, but he pauses when he sees the position that the older kid is in.

Roy is curled up on the floor, leaning his body against the tub. He’s muttering to himself, although Jason can’t make out the words. He can, however, tell that Roy is trembling, his whole body shaking as he runs his hands up and down his arms.

“Harper? You okay?” Obviously he wasn’t, but he needs some way to let Roy know that he’s standing there. 

It takes a solid twenty seconds for Roy’s muttering to come to a stuttering halt and have his eyes flicker over to the doorway, and Jason shifts anxiously back and forth wondering if he should go in.

It takes even longer for the redhead’s eyes to actually focus on Jason, and then close immediately as he leans his head back against the wall at his back.

“Shit.” There’s a beat of silence, and Jason steps closer until he’s standing in the doorway.

“Go back to s-sleep, kid. S’rry I woke you up. I’m-m-m fine.”

Jason snorts as he leans against the doorjam. “Bullshit.”

“D-did you n-n-n-eed the bathr-r-room?” Roy tries to talk past the shivers that wrack his body every few seconds, tries to stand only to grab at the side of the tub before he falls back.

Jason makes his decision and enters the bathroom, crouching to get on Roy’s level as he gives up on standing and falls forward on his knees instead.

“Nope. You look like shit, Harper.”

Roy’s lips twitch in what may be a smirk or another tremor. “Thanks-s.”

He looks closer, noticing the sweat on Roy’s skin and the constant rubbing of his arms. The trembling. Jason has seen this before. He sees the marks following the lines of Roy’s veins before hands cover them over and over.

“Withdrawal?”

Roy shakes his head, eyes shut again. “No, I’m c-c-clean. Just, sometimes, I d’nno,”

Jason remembers something Roy said to him once. “Some things you just can’t shake.”

Roy nods once, staring down at the tiles, the trembling slowing a little now that he’s not trying to move.

“You gonna puke?”

He gets a quizzical look, and Jason motions to the toilet. “Well? Do you think you’re going to puke?”

Roy shakes his head. “No.”

Jason puts an arm around his back in response and pulls, lifting the older boy to his feet even as he feels his body shake with Roy’s tremors.

“What are y-yu-you doing?”

“Taking you to the couch, where it’s much more comfortable than the fucking floor of a bathroom.”

“But it’s your b-bed, I c-c-can’t—”

“It was your couch before it was my bed, Harper. Don’t worry about it, okay?” They move slowly over to the couch, Jason half-dragging Roy whose legs didn’t seem to want to hold his weight. He sits the other boy down and wraps him in both the blankets on the futon over his protests that he was fine, that Jason needs one, that he’s just going to make them sweaty.

“It’s fine, Roy, just fucking chill out. Jesus, you’d think no one has ever helped you through withdrawal before.”

“I’m not —”

Jason rolls his eyes. “I know, you’re clean. That doesn’t mean you can’t get cravings and withdrawal symptoms for months afterward. I read that sometimes people still get days of the shakes after they’ve quit years before.”

“Why?” Roy is giving him a weird look, and Jason shrugs.

“My ma was an addict. She tried to stop a few times. I’ve read about it a lot.”

“No, I mean.” He wasn’t looking at Jason anymore, instead staring down at the floor. At least the shaking had slowed with the addition of blankets, like Jason had hoped. “Why do you believe me? Usually Ol— people just yell at me and think I’ve relapsed.”

“Well, those people are fucking idiots. Weren’t you listening to what I said about years-later shakes?”

Roy shrugs. “It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve fallen off the wagon.”

“Well, did you?” He gets a glare, or the best approximation of one that an exhausted Roy can do when he’s probably been up like this for hours with no one to help. “There ya go, then.”

Roy just shakes his head. “You’re fucking crazy, Jaybird.”

Jason groans and shoves at him, pushing him down until he’s lying on his side. “Don’t fucking call me that. Just go to sleep, man.”

“Still your bed, though.”

“You need more sleep than I do right now.”

“Bullshit.” Apparently Jason wasn’t as stealthy as he thought he had been waking from his nightmares.

“Scoot over, then.” Roy’s eyebrows shoot up, and Jason snorts. “Unless you can think of another solution that has both of us sleeping and doesn’t leave you suffering alone, because I’m not that mean.”

His mom had always said it was easier with someone else there, not that they had had much space to be apart, especially after his dad had been arrested. He had curled up next to her and they sang softly together until they fell asleep as her shaking stopped.

That gives Jason an idea.

“Sit up, Harper.”

Looking confused, he does. Jason sits and grabs the pillow from where his own tossing and turning had moved it, settling it in his lap and pulling Roy back down until the older boy’s head is laying in his lap.

“We can both sleep like this, okay?”

Roy is squinting up at him. “Really? You can sleep sitting up like that?”

Jason nods, trying not to think about why his sleep has been better when he’s sitting up after falling asleep reading than lying down on a bed or couch. Tries not to think about falling.

“Okay?” Roy’s voice pulls him out of his own head, and Jason looks down to see him giving him a concerned look.

“It’s fine. Go to sleep.”

“Bullshit, but alright. Good night, Jason.”

“Good night, Roy.”

Jason doesn’t close his eyes, and he knows Roy doesn’t either. Bored after a few minutes, he begins carding his fingers through Roy’s hair like he used to do with his mother.

Roy mutters, well, Jason doesn’t know what he says, but it sounds like a question. With a lot of vowels, whatever language it was in.

“That wasn’t english, dude, but we’ll talk about that later. Unless you want me to stop?” His fingers still briefly, unsure.

“S’rry. No, feels g’d.” His words were slurring together in his exhaustion, but at least his eyes had closed finally. Jason nods and resumes playing with the other boy’s hair.

After a minute he begins to sing softly, a song that he’d listened to the theatre kids sing over and over after school when the musical came out.

“Have you ever felt like nobody was there?  
Have you ever felt forgotten in the middle of nowhere?  
Have you ever felt like you could disappear?  
Like you could fall, and no one would hear?

“Well, let that lonely feeling wash away.  
Maybe there’s a reason to believe you’ll be okay.  
‘Cause when you don’t feel strong enough to stand,  
You can reach, reach out your hand.

“And oooh, someone will come running,  
And I knooow, they’ll take you home.

“Even when the dark comes crashing through,  
When you need a friend to carry you,  
And when you’re broken on the ground,  
You will be found.

“So let the sun come streaming in,  
‘Cause you’ll reach up and you’ll rise again.  
Lift your head and look around,  
You will be found.  
You will be found.”

His own eyes slip shut halfway through the song, and his voice gets quieter and quieter as his hands continue their repetition. Eventually they still as his breathing deepens to match Roy’s as he finally falls asleep.

They don’t wake up until almost noon, and it’s the best sleep Jason has had in weeks.


End file.
